Clive Cussler celebrates 40 years of Dirk Pitt adventures

Cussler is the creator of five popular fiction series, each with a different co-author.

The Dirk Pitt Adventures

Part James Bond, part Jacques Cousteau, Pitt battles villains for the National Underwater and Marine Agency.

First book: “The Mediterranean Caper,” 1973.

Latest book (with Dirk Cussler): “Poseidon’s Arrow,” 2012.

The NUMA Files

More underwater archaeology (think Indiana Jones under the sea) in this spinoff series starring NUMA diver Kurt Austin.

First book (with Paul Kemprecos): “Serpent,” 1999.

Latest book (with Graham Brown): “Zero Hour,” 2013.

The Oregon Files

Adventurer-for-hire Juan Cabrillo captains a ship that looks like a derelict but is actually a high-tech floating fortress.

First book (with Craig Dirgo): “Golden Buddha,” 2003.

Latest book (with Jack Du Brul): “The Jungle,” 2011.

The Isaac Bell Adventures

Retro techno thrillers about a detective agency, modeled after the famed Pinkertons, in the early 20th century.

First book: “The Chase,” 2007.

Latest book (with Justin Scott): “The Striker,” 2013.

The Fargo Adventures

Married couple Sam and Remi Fargo search for hidden treasures.

First book (with Grant Blackwood): “Spartan Gold,” 2009.

Latest book (with Thomas Perry): “The Tombs,” 2012.

By Kerry LengelThe Republic | azcentral.comSat Jul 13, 2013 8:27 PM

He quit a successful career in advertising and began writing his first novel from the back room of a dive shop on the California coast.

He started a world-class car collection on a romantic whim, buying a 1946 Ford Club Coupe from a Colorado farmer for $400 because it was the same model his wife drove in high school.

He invented the National Underwater and Marine Agency for his books, and then turned it into a real-life organization dedicated to recovering wrecked ships for archaeological posterity.

With apologies to today’s generation of ad writers, best-selling author Clive Cussler just might be the most interesting man in the world. But he does not prefer Dos Equis. Like James Bond, he’s more of a martini man.

On Tuesday, July 16 — the day after his 82nd birthday — the longtime Paradise Valley resident will celebrate the release of a 40th-anniversary edition of his debut novel, “The Mediterranean Caper.” It will be the first hardcover publication of the novel that launched a series starring the dashing Dirk Pitt, who, like Cussler, has a passion for classic cars and high-seas adventure.

Cussler “actually is an action hero,” says his friend Barbara Peters, owner of the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, which hosts all local events for the prolific author.

“He’s not some nerdy guy writing in his living room, he’s the real deal. That’s one of the reasons I love Clive. …. He’s really a gentleman in an old-fashioned sense.”

Bringing story ideas alive

Like many creators of long-running fiction series, including James Patterson and Tom Clancy, Cussler now works with a stable of co-authors who bring his prolific story ideas alive on the page. He handed off his flagship Dirk Pitt series to his son, uncoincidentally named Dirk Cussler, with 2004’s “Black Wind” and oversees four other series from his home office.

“It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy working with all these other fellows,” Cussler says during a recent interview. “It’s great fun. And then the money’s good. Why get money on one book when you can get it on five?”

Dubbed “the Grandmaster of Adventure,” Cussler works behind a huge wooden desk surrounded by history books and personal memorabilia, including scale models and paintings of the ships he has helped recover through the non-profit NUMA, including the H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine from the Civil War.

At the moment, Cussler is recovering from a nasty leg break.

“I was telling everybody at first that I was shot in Afghanistan, but then I said, ‘I can’t lie, I fell off a bicycle,’ ” he explains.

Neither boastful nor prone to false modesty, Cussler is clearly a man who knows how to enjoy his success.

“It’s just always been fun to look for shipwrecks, write books and play with old cars,” he says.

A life of passions

Cussler’s fascination with the ocean stems from his childhood in Los Angeles County, where he took up body surfing. Then, during the Korean War, he enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed in Hawaii for three years. After learning how to snorkel, he and a friend ordered an Aqua-Lung — an air tank and regulator for scuba diving — from underwater adventurer Jacques Cousteau’s company.

“It took three months before it finally came over,” Cussler recalls. “We went down to the base, filled up the tank with old stale air out of a compressor, and then we took it and dashed off into the ocean. We had no instruction in those days, but fortunately we never went over 30 feet.”

His other obsession, with automobiles, also came early.

“That started in high school,” he says. “Just for a joke I bought this big 1925 Auburn limousine (for $18), and my buddies and I used to dress up as gangsters — overcoats, hats pulled down, smoking cigars. And I played the violin for about six minutes when I was a kid — it proved to be a disaster — so I took the violin case and we’d go to the football games, and none of the guards ever wised up to the fact that I had beer and wine in the violin case.”

Both of these passions would come to figure prominently in Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series, whose protagonist he envisioned as a combination of Bond and Cousteau.

After a decade working in advertising as a copywriter and then creative director, Cussler started writing in 1965 with encouragement from his first wife, Barbara, who died in 2003 after nearly five decades of marriage.

“I was offered a better position from my agency to go over and take over the Prudential Insurance account, which was a pretty big deal at the time,” he says. “But my wife, she tore out this ad in the Santa Ana Register, and she said, ‘If you want to write sea books, why don’t you apply for this job?’ And it was for a clerk in a dive shop for $400 a month. She was working, so I said, ‘OK, why not?’ ”

Taking the plunge

Cussler enjoyed the job, but during slow spells he slipped into the back to work on his first novel. It was called “Pacific Vortex” and starred a maritime crime-fighter who was an idealized version of the would-be author himself.

“I think I weighed 185 at the time, and I was 6 foot 3,” he says. “My eyes were greener than they are now. So I gave them all to Pitt and went from there.”

“He’s kind of a nice average guy, really. He never took a karate lesson and he didn’t lift weights. (But) he could do things I never could do, and he made out with the girls better than I ever did.”

He named the character Dirk after his 3-year-old son and chose the surname Pitt for its pithiness.

“It’s easier to say ‘Pitt jumped over the wall’ than ‘Shagnasty jumped over the wall,’ ” he jokes.

After “Pacific Vortex” he wrote a second adventure, “The Mediterranean Caper,” but it took a long time to get either of them published.

The first step was finding an agent, which turned into one of Cussler’s best real-life stories.

He was back working at a local ad agency, so he had the art director print up stationery from a “Charles Winthrop Agency.” He had a list of New York agents, and Peter Lampack, then at William Morris, was at the top. He wrote, as Charles Winthrop, “Dear Peter, as you know, I primarily handle motion-picture and television screenplays. However, as we discussed, I ran across a couple of book-length manuscripts which I think have a great deal of potential. Would you like to take a look at them?”

Lampack didn’t care for “Pacific Vortex,” but he did like “The Mediterranean Caper.” Three years later, it was published. It didn’t sell well, nor did a sequel titled “Iceberg.” But 1976’s “Raise the Titanic!” became a best-seller and earned a movie deal. Finally, Cussler decided to come clean to his agent.

“I told him the story of Charlie Winthrop with great trepidation,” he says. “I sat there waiting for the result, and he sat there blank for a minute, and then he laughed himself under the table. And he said, ‘Oh my God. I always thought Charlie Winthrop was some guy I met while I was drunk at a cocktail party.’ ”

Four decades after that audacious ruse, Lampack remains Cussler’s agent and his friend.

A family adventure

There are many more such stories in Cussler’s repertoire. But the most endearing thing about him is how his fictional passions and his real-life ones — including his family — are bound together.

While growing up in Colorado, for example, Dirk Cussler inherited his father’s love of classic cars. They even share a favorite: a 1926 Hispano Suiza that the elder Cussler bought for $50,000 at his first auto auction.

“The car’s like a Model A on steroids,” Dirk Cussler says, “a big jazzy roadster with a polished aluminum hood. It was something I’d never seen before. It was always fun to ride home from school on my bike and open the garage and see this funky old car.”

Starting with 1984’s “Deep Six,” all of the Dirk Pitt novels began featuring vehicles from Cussler’s 100-plus-car collection, a tradition documented in his 2011 coffee-table book “Built for Adventure.” The autos, which include a 1906 Stanley Steamer, are on public display at the Cussler Museum in Arvada, Colo., which was opened by daughter Teri Toft in 2005.

The family is also involved with NUMA, which Cussler founded in 1979 after deciding to search for the Bonhomme Richard, the Revolutionary War ship captained by John Paul Jones that sank off the coast of England in 1779.

“We usually had a summer vacation somewhere looking for a shipwreck, either in South Carolina or the North Sea,” Dirk Cussler says.

NUMA has located dozens of wrecks over the years, including numerous Confederate ships, but the Bonhomme Richard remains elusive. Dirk Cussler says he travels to England almost every year to continue the search.

Passing the baton

Of course, the most important thing father and son share is the Dirk Pitt franchise.

The younger Cussler, who also lives in Paradise Valley,began writing non-fiction after he was laid off from Motorola in 2001. His father, who was growing weary of the grind of writing series fiction, sensed an opportunity for them both. Since then, Dirk Cussler has co-authored five Pitt novels, most recently “Poseidon’s Arrow.”

“He considers himself more of an entertainer than a writer per se,” the son says. “And that’s kind of the gist of all of what we try to do, to write something that’s entertaining and fun that the reader feels like they got their money’s worth at the end of the day.”

It all has been a grand adventure indeed. Clive Cussler only has one regret.

“I always laugh about the fact Pitt’s in his 40s, and when we started out together he was 36 and I was 38. And now he’s probably about 45, and I’m 82. It’s not fair.”

Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896.

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